"Cold Blood helped make rogues not care about crit as a stat."

Because it's a much more favorable stat now, right...? Last time I checked, Sub, the one spec that did care about crit, no longer does. Assassination has never cared for crit, nor did the removal of Cold Blood increase its value past the "worst secondary stat"-threshold. If they truly wanted to increase the value of crit, why didn't they simply address the actual issue?

They need to decrease the value of the other secondary stats if crit is to become useful, or introduce new mechanics that propel its value past that of haste and mastery. Alternatively, they could finally just normalize energy regeneration, and make it independent instead of relying on haste; that would bump down the value of haste by quite a bit. Either way, the removal of Cold Blood resulted in NOTHING.

To be fair, the key word here is helped. Which it did, because when you give a spec an ability that guarantees a critical strike, the overall value of crit goes down for that spec.

Now it's still a cop-out answer, but technically what he said is true.

What shalnath said is correct. This exact same topic turned up on the European WoW forums a few weeks ago and I gave the exact same reply. Cold Blood was one of the reasons crit wasn't favorable and not the one and only reason as most people there tend to think. Crit in Cataclysm was so terrible that any gear with crit would almost instantly lose it's value, currently gear with crit is something in the lines of ''well it sucks this thing has crit, but I'll deal with it''. Heck someone did some sims at lower pre-raiding gear levels and crit came out as one of the top stats. Even in full T14 heroic gear, crit is hardly any worse than haste.

As much as I like to complain about the passive crit chance removal from Mutilate and Backstab, they did succeed in making all secondary stats worthwhile. It's just that some are more worthwhile than others.

My favorite part was: "Regarding Cold blood response... Does warrior not care about crit because of recklessness?
Warriors have extra mechanics to make crit more valuable. Note that we did lower it from 100% to 50% a couple of expansions ago."

I see...so 50% crit on all specials for 12 seconds is far less impactful than 100% crit on one attack. GC logic sounds like some of the most sophisticated trolling i've ever came across. God forbid they put in the work to make us want crit, instead just strip away our bonuses...that way we're worse over all and crit is still our worst stat.

Originally Posted by Bovan

Aside from that who here actually liked Cold Blood in PvE? I can definitely see it being useful in PvP but Assassination wasn't really a spec you would do some serious PvP on in Cataclysm.

I didn't particularly like it, but then again at the time energy regeneration wasn't an issue...that 25 energy they added to it later on looks pretty nice now.

I didn't particularly like it, but then again at the time energy regeneration wasn't an issue...that 25 energy they added to it later on looks pretty nice now.

I know it's a little burst of instant energy, but it would translate to 0.13 energy per second. I think we'll survive without.

Anyway I personally always considered it as a waste of a keybind. I did always use it to it's full effect like when I had Vendetta active and only with a 5 combo point Envenom but... it was a horrible and boring ability to use in PvE.

My favorite part was: "Regarding Cold blood response... Does warrior not care about crit because of recklessness?
Warriors have extra mechanics to make crit more valuable. Note that we did lower it from 100% to 50% a couple of expansions ago."

I see...so 50% crit on all specials for 12 seconds is far less impactful than 100% crit on one attack. GC logic sounds like some of the most sophisticated trolling i've ever came across. God forbid they put in the work to make us want crit, instead just strip away our bonuses...that way we're worse over all and crit is still our worst stat.

Warriors have a more interesting interaction with crit than we do (as anything but assassination, where, let's face it, it means +1 CP and a bit of damage). Warriors get damage, iirc more rage, chance to proc enrage (might be outdated... I haven't actually touched my warrior much since 5.0)... but they do get crit scaling, and crit is their most valuable stat. By reducing the +crit to 50% from 100%, crit to 50% still retains value under recklessness, meaning there's no period of reduced value. Automatic crits DO reduce the value of passive or proc crit.

Do I think this means we should want crit more? Eeeeh. It DOES mean our model for damage could be made... more interesting.

Warriors have a more interesting interaction with crit than we do (as anything but assassination, where, let's face it, it means +1 CP and a bit of damage). Warriors get damage, iirc more rage, chance to proc enrage (might be outdated... I haven't actually touched my warrior much since 5.0)... but they do get crit scaling, and crit is their most valuable stat. By reducing the +crit to 50% from 100%, crit to 50% still retains value under recklessness, meaning there's no period of reduced value. Automatic crits DO reduce the value of passive or proc crit.

Do I think this means we should want crit more? Eeeeh. It DOES mean our model for damage could be made... more interesting.

The point I was making is warriors want crit because it's good for them, rather than emulating this working model they attempted to make us want crit by stripping bonuses. That's the worst possible way to approach class design. If they were genuinely worried about the value of our crit, they wouldn't have scrapped something like Seal Fate energy regen. The devaluation of crit from Cold Blood was so minor that it's a ridiculous citation as to why this ability no longer exists.

In the same way as single flake of snow 'helps' an avalanche destroy a ski resort. To think that someone looked at the pages and pages of feedback in Beta and at the end of Cata and came screaming out of his office like a madman, "We've done it! THIS will make rogues care more about crit!" And then they took the rest of the beta off and went on holiday.

Warriors have a more interesting interaction with crit than we do (as anything but assassination, where, let's face it, it means +1 CP and a bit of damage). Warriors get damage, iirc more rage, chance to proc enrage (might be outdated... I haven't actually touched my warrior much since 5.0)... but they do get crit scaling, and crit is their most valuable stat. By reducing the +crit to 50% from 100%, crit to 50% still retains value under recklessness, meaning there's no period of reduced value. Automatic crits DO reduce the value of passive or proc crit.

Do I think this means we should want crit more? Eeeeh. It DOES mean our model for damage could be made... more interesting.

Thats been changed. Crit = more enrage uptime and more RB usage, currently.

I have to agree with OP. It's not a well thought out response on GCs part. I believe SF was on a 3 min CD

The ability was a bit weird to use in PVE but it was a staple rogue ability since Van.

The ability was a bit weird to use in PVE but it was a staple rogue ability since Van.

*Smacks Nekked on the nose with a newspaper* No, bad boy!

Just because something has been there since Vanilla doesn't mean it's good or that it can't be outdated. On the contrary, Cold Blood made such a little impact that aside from this whole crit thing we got going on here just wasn't worth keeping in. People have also been complaining about Cold Blood throughout Cataclysm to have it either reworked to something significant or removed.

Cold Blood is an outdated ability that server no purpose aside from nostalgia or making your left hand look shiny. Again I can see it being okay-ish in PvP but still nothing major. If you want my opinion, I want the Deadly Brew talent back and make Cold Blood the PvP 4 set bonus. Possibly reduce the cooldown as well.

Just because something has been there since Vanilla doesn't mean it's good or that it can't be outdated. On the contrary, Cold Blood made such a little impact that aside from this whole crit thing we got going on here just wasn't worth keeping in. People have also been complaining about Cold Blood throughout Cataclysm to have it either reworked to something significant or removed.

Cold Blood is an outdated ability that server no purpose aside from nostalgia or making your left hand look shiny. Again I can see it being okay-ish in PvP but still nothing major. If you want my opinion, I want the Deadly Brew talent back and make Cold Blood the PvP 4 set bonus. Possibly reduce the cooldown as well.

I hated Cold Blood, to be frank. It felt very useless and had next to no impact on your overall dps. If it'd grant us 100% crit chance for, say, 6 seconds or some other extended amount of time, then HOLY FUCK I'd demand it back! But no, it only affected one ability, resulting in very little additional damage... A cooldown that can be matched by slightly good RNG doesn't make a good cooldown, in my opinion.
Its removal was a good thing, because it reduces the amount of needless abilities on our action bars.

That said, the reasoning behind its removal is what I question, and the fact that nothing was given to Assassination to compensate for the loss. Apparently, an internal goal seems to have been the "increase in crits value for rogues". Cold Blood was removed, but nothing else has been done to achieve said goal. In fact, they seem to have done more harm than good, by removing the +crit damage passives, which made the value of crit plummet!

Assassination currently only has Vendetta, and the bad (Yes, BAD!) cooldown that is Shadow Blades. I've expressed my contempt for Shadow Blades and why it's bad outside of Combat before, so I won't pursue that endeavor unless prompted to do so, and with Vendetta alone, Assassination lacks SOMETHING in the cooldown department; be it some heavier burst or some situational energy regeneration, Assa needs something to compensate for the loss of Cold Blood.